SEATTLE, Wash. – March 16, 2009 – Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based virtual lab solutions, today announced it completed a $7 million Series B round of funding from Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Washington Research Foundation. The funds will be used to bolster the company’s product development, sales and marketing efforts.
Skytap’s rapidly growing list of customers utilize its cloud-based virtual lab solution to augment or replace dynamic, high cost IT environments such as those used for application development and testing, IT prototyping, product demonstrations and technical training. By allowing users to scale resources on-demand and pay only for time and resources utilized, customers can immediately reduce costs, increase productivity and improve responsiveness to business demands.
Since emerging from stealth less than one year ago, Skytap has achieved strong customer traction and third-party recognition for its innovative virtual lab offering. Skytap was profiled in InformationWeek’s feature on “20 Cloud Computing Startups You Should Know,” and named a “Top Ten Start-Up to Watch” by Network World. Additionally, Skytap was selected by Savvis, the global market share leader in IT infrastructure services, to be a core offering for Savvis customers seeking to migrate development and test environments to the cloud.
“Skytap has a compelling offering that is well positioned in a growing, high potential market,” said Matt McIlwain, Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group. “The team has demonstrated a strong record of success and proven it can sell successfully in a down economy which gives us confidence that the company will continue to thrive and become a very successful business.”
“Within the exciting cloud computing market, Skytap has carved out an enviable position for itself with its highly differentiated virtual lab offering,” said Brad Silverberg, partner at Ignition Partners. “Since Skytap has been in market they have met or exceeded every customer, bookings, and revenue goal and they are off to a great start in 2009. We continue to have the highest degree of confidence that Skytap will build upon the success they have experienced, and that this round of financing will further extend their leadership in the market.”
“In a challenging economic climate early stage companies must prove that their solution provides immediate and tangible cost savings. Skytap’s ability to deliver both hard and soft dollar savings, usually in just days or weeks, has enabled us to accelerate customer acquisition and revenue growth over the last year,” said Scott Roza, CEO of Skytap. “Skytap’s Series B funding will enable us to innovate at a faster pace and increase our revenue growth rate.”
Skytap is hiring and looking for extraordinary professionals to join us to develop the next generation of cloud-based services. Please visit http://www.skytap.com/about-us/careers for job openings.
About Madrona Venture Group
Madrona (www.madrona.com) has been investing in early-stage technology companies in the Pacific Northwest since 1995 and has been privileged to play a role in some of the region’s most successful technology ventures. The firm invests across the information technology spectrum including consumer Internet, commercial software and services, digital media and advertising, networking and infrastructure, and wireless. Madrona currently manages nearly $700 million and was an early investor in companies such as Amazon.com, Isilon Systems, World Wide Packets, iConclude, Farecast.com, and ShareBuilder.
About Ignition Partners
Ignition Partners, (www.ignitionpartners.com) is a premier private investment group with offices in Bellevue, Washington and Shanghai, China. Ignition Partners’ affiliated family of funds includes Ignition Ventures and Ignition Growth Capital in the U.S. and Qiming Ventures in China. The investment group’s three categories of funds – early stage venture, growth capital and China ventures -brings together an unparalleled combination of domain focus, functional expertise and global operational experience with partners from leadership positions at Microsoft, McCaw Cellular Communications, AT&T Wireless, Cisco, Starbucks and other industry leaders.
